Letterman and Palin: An American Anti-Love Story

Ed note: this is by frequent AlterNet commenter Tom Degan, who writes the blog, The Rant.

DISCLAIMER:

Let me start this thing off by saying that I thought the joke David Letterman made last week on his program at the expense of Sarah Palin's daughter was, to be polite, in questionable taste. Dave and his writers made their reputation for their wit and sophistication. They can do better than that.

The other day, a spokesman for Sarah Palin made this incredibly suggestive statement: "It would be wise to keep Willow [Palin's fourteen-year-old-daughter] away from David Letterman." When asked yesterday morning by NBC's Matt Lauer exactly what that statement implied, Palin callously replied, "Take it however you want to take it." Nice!

I've seen some sleazy politicians in my day, but what Sarah Palin did this week, exploiting her underage daughter - using her name as an imaginary victim of an imaginary rape by a man five decades her senior - was, beyond a shadow of any doubt, the most despicable thing I've ever witnessed in the circus arena that American politics has become.

The joke Letterman made, distasteful as we might find it, was not about Governor Palin's fourteen-year-old daughter Willow.